A LODGE-CUM-SHELTER IN THE SPANISH PYRENEES

A project by Stone Designs and Pepa Prieto

Spanish Pyrenees (Aragón) (Spain)
25 February 2010

Company: STONE DESIGNS

Product/Designer: Stone Designs and Pepa Prieto

Reminiscent of Canadian log cabins, this wooden lodge, called El Portillo, is situated in the ski resort of Javalambre, in the Spanish Pyrenees in the region of Aragón.

The main challenge its designers faced was to convert what until recently had been a badly neglected café into a hamburger restaurant to service the specific part of the ski resort it’s located in. This custom-built project, set in deep country and in an entirely snowy landscape, was carried out by the Madrid-based design studio Stone Designs.

The starting point for the project was for the building’s exterior and interior to complement each other, and for it to harmonise with the landscape around it while contrasting with it. With these aims in mind, the designers decided to paint the cabin’s facade blackboard black to contrast sharply with the snow (but still harmonise with it since black is a neutral colour), while enlivening the facade with drawings created by graphic artist Pepa Prieto (www.pepaprieto.com), who collaborates regularly with Stone Designs. Prieto has indeed made the walls come to life with her large-scale white drawings of kooky, cartoony creatures which seem to loom out of the snow.

By contrast, the interior has been painted white – in order to maximise the limited amount of light you get in this area on cloudy days – and furnished in as minimal and functional a way as possible. The only slightly theatrical – and disorientating – element is a length of red climbing rope which zigzags along the walls and ceiling, and gives the space a sense of movement and life. Under the rope, which looks like a graphic, drawn red line, are Nordic-looking stripped pine tables, the ends of which are painted apple green (the corporate colour of Aramón, Spain’s largest ski resort group).

By way of seating, Stone Designs created benches which tie in nicely with the rest of the furniture and the space as a whole since these, too, are made of stripped pine, while their steel sledge legs are covered with the same red climbing rope used elsewhere.

The lighting, which was specifically designed to illuminate the tables, is made of polycarbonate cylinders over which are draped green felt rectangles which help create a cosy atmosphere.

And finally the bar area of the hamburger joint is decorated with a band of black paint which echoes the colour of the lodge’s exterior and whose dark tone gives the interior a certain richness and depth.